


The Marketplace

by MissMallora (orphan_account)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Babies, Complete, Disgusting amounts of fluff, F/M, First POV, Fluff, GO READ IT, HEA, Oneshot, Post War, Sandor is a daddy and it's awesome, Sansa and Sandor live on a farm, i hate describing imagery, i wish i could write comedy, if you haven't, inspired by Christopher Moore's "The Lamb", no politics, no serious plot, sorry it's my fav style, that'd be super cool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-15 02:50:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5768518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/MissMallora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The son of a farmer, Robb, learns the depth of his gruff and grumpy father's love one day, when a venture into the marketplace takes an unexpected turn. </p><p> </p><p>Shameless fluff. Parental stuff. The usual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Marketplace

As children, we have this unshakable, deep-rooted belief that the life we live is the one every child lives—until, of course, we’re told otherwise. I was no different. My brother and I, the pair of us thought the whole of Westeros lived as simply and humbly as our family did, because for years neither of our parents bothered to tell us differently. We rose with the sun, and we helped care for the livestock and harvest the crops. Come nightfall, our father returned from the fields, and we sat and ate dinner as a family. My mother would oftentimes tell us a story, or teach us more of our letters and numbers. Then we went to bed.

And that was the sum of my childhood.

I didn’t think it was a bad life because it was repetitive or exhausting (and it was _both_ of those things); I simply didn’t know that there were those who lived far better, nor those who lived _much_ worse.

Of my parents’ lives prior to getting married (another hard concept for children to grasp), I only knew that my mother grew up in a large family, and my father didn’t have any family at all. I asked my mother once where this big family of hers had gone. A boy in the village named Harry had an uncle and an aunt; it made me wonder what happened to mine.

Her face, the warmest and kindest face I had ever known, grew distant and sad. At the time, I was struck by the immediate idea that if I tried to reach out and touch her cheek, my hand would only keep on gliding through air, touching nothing. For she was so far away, seated there in her rocking chair, the one my father made her when my older brother was born.

“They’re gone, sweetling.” Her eyes glistened with tears, and it made me want to do the same. That’s all she said before her gentle hand cupped my chin, and her eyes smiled sadly at me. “Let’s have tea.”

I left it at that, too scared to provoke her to tears once more. My father didn’t like whenever my mother cried, and the source of her tears was often either banished to their bed or else obliterated entirely.

As for my father… What an indescribable man. Growing up, you think your parents are the two strongest, most infallible people in the world. Your mother is a fountain of youth and your father has a fist of iron, and together they create a wealth of time that doesn’t run out. But that isn’t true, not in the slightest, and I wish I had appreciated what I had then, that I took the time to linger in the happy moments more often.

The relationship my brother and I had with our father was complicated, and it took me a great many years to understand why. First, as a young lad, I only thought to please him and make him proud. My father worked every day with heavy tools, ploughing the field, tending the crops, tilling the earth. And so he had these hands, large calloused palms, rough and weathered and sharp enough to cut rocks.

My brother used to threaten me with those hands. Said if I didn’t do what he told me to, Father would beat me to a pulp. He never did, my father. Didn’t lay a mean hand on me my whole life—except to belt me, of course, but all the lads and lasses had that happen when they were small.

I remember my father with my mother, from time to time. Gods, he loved his wife, and she him. Every day when he came home, she—my perfectly clean and tidy and groomed mother—would run for him with open arms, embrace his sweat, dirt-covered body, and grasp his gritty hands, kiss his uneven mouth. _Yuck,_ I muttered to my brother, who would then nod in fervent agreement.

Yeah. _Yuck_.

It’s funny, now, how I should only feel content when I think back on all the kisses my parents shared, all the ones I did and didn’t see. Not for a second did I question my father’s love for my mother. Not for a second did I think either of them to be unhappy with our simple little life.

Never did I think either of them had lived differently, _before_.

It was easy as breathing, loving my mother. She was well-liked in the market, despite her mere few encounters there, and vendors knew to treat her well lest they face my father’s wrath. Not that she needed the support, really. I’d seen my mother drive a deal, seen her smoothly coax a sky high price to half its original number.

On top of her kindness was her beauty, though I can’t remember ever thinking her as beautiful when I was a young boy. She _was_ beautiful, and I wouldn’t have denied it if asked. But it was a familiar beauty to me, the sort that I had known since I had first opened my eyes. For a child, that sort of beauty is unrecognizable for some time too.

I think it was only fair that my brother and sisters and I had such a warm, loving mother, for it made up for the difficulty in trying to love my father _._

I did love him though. He was my hero, and I loved him well, though I wasn’t always sure how to love him back when I was that age. He was a hard man indeed, and though he wasn’t silent and dour all the time, he was selective with his words, fierce when he wanted to be. My brother and I might take all day getting around to doing whatever chore our mother set aside for us, whereas my _father’s_ instructions were always carried out immediately. He could have asked us to build a new house and it would have been done overnight.

Yes, he was a very hard man, and loving him was as much a chore as mucking out the stalls at times. He had a bad leg, see, and it acted up in the cold. And being in the north, that meant it acted up quite often. I don’t think it was the pain that angered him, but the way it rendered him immobile that made him truly mad. Some days, as I got older, he couldn’t stand up at all, and had my brother and I do the duties of the fieldwork for the day. My mother always had a good meal waiting for us when we finished, and hugs and kisses and kind, loving words for us both. My father, on those nights, was nowhere in sight.

But on good days, it was better, and on the good days he would take us out after lunch and show us something new about the farm. Or else just show us what we already had seen, so we didn’t forget, or so we could understand it better. He would lecture about vegetables, about butchering animals, about all sorts of things. And all the while, my brother and I listened with rapt attention, barely daring to blink or twitch or even breathe, lest we miss something.

My father wasn’t one to repeat himself.

All the same, we each craved his approval, my brother and I, and we spent most days trying to out-do the other. It was as close to _fun_ as chores can get, and it always made the time go by faster—even though someone’s feelings were often sore by the end, usually mine.

(Hey, I was two years younger and skinnier by far!)

I guess I always knew deep down that my father loved us, his children. It wasn’t always obvious, not least of all for my brother and I, but I knew it. My mother told me for one, and, well… It was just something I knew. You don’t care for people the way my father cared for us if you don’t love them.

At any rate, if I ever doubted my father’s love for either myself or my siblings, those fears were vanquished in my tenth year, on the day I ventured into town with my brother to help my father bring home a new wagon for the farm.

To call the cluster of buildings and vendor stalls a “market” might be reaching a tad, having travelled the north a good deal myself now as a grown man, but at the time it was the busiest place I’d ever been. Women trading for wool and thread. Men trading for seeds and shovels. And my brother and I, twelve and ten respectively, chasing after our father’s long stride whilst pushing and ramming shoulders against one another, giggling as we ran.

“Edd, Robb, enough of that.” My father didn’t have to ask twice. My brother, Eddard or Eddy as I called him, gave me one last nudge as though to tell me to be quiet—a reminder I didn’t need. Being asked to come into town was a privilege we didn’t get too often, after being stuck at the farm most days, and it wasn’t an opportunity one should squander.

For myself, there was the pleasure of _things._ The armory was always a thrill, and every so often a vendor from out of town came to visit. Once there was a stall filled with fruits and vegetables from the southern parts of Westeros. My father spotted these strange yellow fruits with bumpy skin and brought home half a dozen for my mother. It made her cry with mad joy.

I liked the merchants and their goods, but my brother had lost taste for all that roughly a year ago. Oh, the swords still excited him and the exotic trinkets were grand, but nowadays he set his sights on _better_ things. More _splendored_ things.

Girls.

Pretty girls in the marketplace were sometimes fewer than the travelling merchants, but not so rare that it stopped him from coming. Whenever Eddy and I were allowed to venture into town, he always did his best to give me the slip to try and talk to the blacksmith’s daughter, a fifteen year-old girl by the name of Bess.

Eddy was sweet on Bess, and I think the whole world knew it.

Including Bess.

And my father.

There wasn’t much time for flirting with the blacksmith’s daughter today, though, for it would be plenty of work carting the new wagon home, even after we got it hitched to the horse, an old and irritable, half-dead creature my father _so lovingly_ called Stranger. On top of the wagon, my father meant to bring home a decent share of supplies meant for trading, and he told us we’d be needed to help gather things and load them into the wagon.

Fancy way of saying he doesn’t want to do all the hard work.

I struck up conversation with him as we weaved through the stalls, my brother and I on either side of him.

“Why did you choose to live here, Da?”

He frowned down at me briefly, and then looked ahead, hands on the reins, guiding our horse. “Weren’t much choice to it. Your mother needed a roof and a constant source of food. Getting bigger by the day with you, Eddard.” He nodded to my brother, who simply stared up at him. “We came here, there was a house with no one home, and we took it.”

“Just like that?” I asked, feeling a bit disappointed. I was privately hoping for something along the lines of ‘a dream told us to come here’ or ‘we had family who lived here once’ or even ‘it just felt like the right place to be.’

‘Wasn’t much choice to it’ was a bit underwhelming, all things considered.

“Well, what did you think happened? An old witch came out and guided us here?” He scoffed and shook his head. “Be grateful it _was_ here. Your mother calls it a gift from the gods.”

“ _You_ don’t,” my brother was quick to point out. Our father had picked up his pace a bit, likely uncomfortable with all the questions he found to be mushy. We were practically running at his heels trying to keep up, our hands each latched on to either of his wrists in our excitement. “You don’t believe in the gods,” my brother said smartly.

“I believe in them well enough,” Da shrugged mildly. “I just don’t let them run my life.”

It was another thing I didn’t fully comprehend at the time.

That conversation had come to an end with those words, as both of his sons had learned when to let a topic die and when it was ok to press for more information. Now was not the time to press.

“Was your father a farmer?” I asked, daring to press in against his side. Not caring of my closeness, even daring to rub a large palm roughly against my curls, my father’s face twisted with concentration, an inward, mulling expression.

“No. He… My father… He ran a house.”

“Your father was a _Lord?”_ I gaped at him, and Eddy did the same. My mother and father had taken the name Roan all my life, and to my knowledge such name had never been an official House in any part of the north.

“Don’t go getting excited,” said my father. “It was a minor House, far away in the south. A Lannister House.”

His words caused my brother and I to make cries of outrage and horror. _Lannister??_ My parents opposed the Lannisters with every bone in their body! Our bedtime stories were those of how the mighty House had fallen, how the lions had turned into meek little kittens and retreated far into the earth to slumber forever. They would _never_ have served a Lannister, not my mother nor my father.

 

….

 

Well, that’s what I believed.

“It’s gone now. I came north with your mother, and we set up here.” He looked out over the vendors, turning back to glance in the direction we had come from, where there was small stone building in the far distance. Our home, I thought with relief, and imagined seeing my mother waving us inside, an impatient flick of her wrists brought on by our inevitable lateness.

My mouth opened to speak—likely to ask if he had met a Lannister personally—when he came to an abrupt halt.

“Da?” “What is it?”

My father nodded to the large shop with sprawling land out back, littered with various objects and tools made from wood. A rather plain but fine-looking wagon sat in field there also, and I knew at once it was ours.

“I needs speak with the woodsman. Wait here,” he muttered, giving us a sharp glance for a warning. No further words were necessary.

In the cool afternoon air, I waited with Eddy, watching my father step inside the shop so I could see him no longer, at which point I slumped back against a wall and sighed loudly.

“A _Lannister_ house.” Edd sounded downright horrified, almost to the point of retching. A glance at his sickly face told me he just might be sick anyways.

I promptly shoved him away, warning him sharply not to be sick on _me._

“Gods!” Edd staggered away, uncaring of my disgust. He’d always been a touch over-dramatic, something which irked my father and even my mother. “What will I tell Bess?”

I scratched my head, pacing away a bit, kicking up dirt as I went. “Uhh…nothing? Why does she have to know?”

“To tell our children, of course!” said Edd, sounding so genuinely irritated at my perceived stupidity, it was all I could do not to duck my head in shame. _Their children?!_ Mother, maiden and crone—my brother knew how to make-believe.

 _“Children??”_ I laughed. We had walked away a bit, across the dirt road and headed under the shelter of the overhanging of another shop, one which specialized in leathers. There was a small hut no doubt housing finer work, and also tables filled with merchandise on display. “Don’t you think you should talk to her regularly first, before you start naming your imaginary heirs?”

“Shut your mouth. You’re just jealous.” Edd turned away with a dreamy look on his face. “She’s perfect.”

“Uh-huh. What’s her mother’s name?”

“What??” He gave a start when he accidentally walked into a table, bumping the legs and making it rattle loudly.

I grinned, and started up in a lecturing tone. “Eddy, if you don’t know it, you can just admit—”

Eddard, who now stood in front of a table loaded with leather belts and boots, glanced over my shoulder and gasped, his eyes widening dramatically. I would’ve laughed then, had I not been so scared myself.

A deep, snarling growl sounded behind me, somewhere over my head, and though I was familiar with growling and snarling voices thanks be to my father, this voice was a whole other sort of anger.

This voice was violence.

“The fuck are you two doing?” I felt the thud of boots in the ground as a man more than thrice my size approached, and when I finally convinced myself to turn around, I found that I sorely wished I hadn’t.

He was tall. Huge, though not so much as my father. His face was cracked and dry and a dark, heavy beard clung to his jaw as strongly as did his stench. Dark, fathomless pits of blackness stared down at me and my brother, the pair of us shrinking into one another. The smell wafting off of him in great waves was not unlike the sour red wine my father drank on occasion.

“Nothing!” I said with only a slight tremble. “Nothing, I swear it!” I could scarcely contain myself. By this point, Eddy—who, despite being older, was always far more timid than I—had shrunk back behind me, cowering and clutching at my shoulder with both of his boyish, bony hands.

“Yes, you were!” the man said with a slur and a stagger in his stride. He approached us with a menacing glare. “Thieves! Fucking filthy thieves! Bastards, the pair of you!”

My brother and I were backed into a table now, and somehow the shop our father had disappeared into was much farther than I remembered walking. How did we manage to wander so far in so little a time? My heart sank in my chest; there was no way he would hear my stammering, being so far away.

Eddy tugged at my sleeve nervously. “Robbie…Robbie, let’s go,” he hissed urgently. But I didn’t budge. It was like something had awakened inside of me, this fierce, unwieldy temper that my own hands, quaking not with fear but rage.

“No.” I said it almost to the point of silence, mouthing the word as I glared up at the man. I found some of my voice then, and my courage. “We _haven’t_ stolen _anything_.”

“Liars!” he shouted, and slammed a fist into a table of his own merchandise. “Empty your pockets, you fucking cunts!”

“No,” I repeated, and the sound of my own voice did wonders for me. “ _No_.” I puffed out my chest a bit. “I’m not doing anything for you, you…you fat-faced, drunken sack of shit.”

“What did you just call me??” At once, the man began to approach, reaching now for his belt where—I gave a high-pitched yelp—a long, thick whip laid coiled at his hip.

It was at this time I remembered I was only ten years old, had never kissed a girl, and was _incredibly_ breakable.

I could _die._ The realization came just as the man began to speak. “I’ll teach you a lesson you’ll die before forgetting, boy.” All the while, all I could think was _I am going to die._

I panicked, and tried to think: left or right? Left or right? Which way to turn? To my right, there was a table. To my left, the hut. Neither offered an escape.

And then there was no time. The man had pulled out the whip, the long coil flopping to the ground and slithering as he began to raise it high in the air. His face was a contorted mess of fury. My wits ran out at that second, and it was I could do to drop to my knees and pray for the end to be quick and merciful. Eddy, whimpering softly, fell to the ground next to me, holding my hand tightly.

One moment I was cowering with both hands over my head, and the next there was a fast scuffle of feet, the sound of the air being pushed out a grown man’s lungs, and a thud of backs scraping the dirt road, arms and legs and tables reeling in the chaos.

When I dared to open my eyes, I saw a man, bigger than any I’d ever met, driving his fists repeatedly into the face of my would-be attacker. Eddy, at last, had found some courage to take over the role of my big brother. He stepped in front of me, arms spread out wide, protectively.

“What…?” I came to my feet and tried to look around Eddy’s shoulders, but he pushed me back relentlessly.

“Get back,” he hissed, not even bothering to turn his face all the way. “Go!”

I almost did leave, my feet turning on the spot to go back to the shop my father had disappeared into, but before I got the chance I realized who had attacked the leather maker. I realized who my rescuer was.

It was my Da.

I had never, in all my ten short years, seen my father raise a fist against anyone. I knew he had, obviously. I knew he fought in battle before. He kept a sword in the home at all times, and cleaned it each dawn before going to work. Eddy and I had both been taught a little, but swords were expensive, and there wasn’t much money to teach two farm boys how to wield a sword after a long, cruel winter.

It seemed in the span of one day I was about to see a decade’s worth of fighting unleashed on the face of one man. Or I thought so, anyways, until three men near the size of either my father or my would-be attacker came running out of the tiny shop, and pried my father off with some sizeable effort. Several times my father managed to knock one of their knees out from under them whenever they tried to approach, reducing them to a heap on the ground.

Everyone was shouting, my father loudest of all.

_“You fucking piece of shit! You dare threaten my boys? You worthless sack of piss! Bastard! The stranger can judge you for **your** fucking crimes, you cock-sucking whoreson! How do you like that!”_

He punctuated each of his words with a hard throw of his fist into the man’s face, stomach, shoulder. Once the man tried to strike my Da, but he didn’t land more than one blow, I was sure of it.

“Whoa,” Eddy muttered to himself, and I was inclined to agree.

It all piddled down into heavy breathing when the other men managed to shove my father back once and for all, allowing the leather-making man to breathe. Actually, I wasn’t so sure he was breathing, until I realized he was whimpering and sobbing, hands over his head, pleading in garbled sounds for mercy.

My father was tossed back with rough shoves until he was standing just in front of my brother and myself, glowering at the trio who had forced him into compliance.

“What the fuck is going on then?” one man asked, a large gap in his teeth. He frowned up at my father, then down at the pair of us. The glance in our direction made my father’s legs lunge warningly, like a wolf protecting his pack, and all three men took a collective step away, palms raised in the air to beseech understanding and patience.

The man my father struck remained on the floor, clutching at his face and whimpering pathetically. In truth and in my anger, I found it morbidly funny. Here was a grown man, bigger than my brother and I combined, now reduced to a blubbering baby all from the blows of my father’s fist.

It helped, of course, that I knew the man had initially meant to make my brother and I cry on the ground much the same way and then some, had he gotten the chance.

“You ought to teach your boys to show some respect.” Another man said with a menacing scowl, pointing a pudgy finger at my face like a sentencing.

“He knows.” My father folded his arms across his impressively large chest. “Respect is for those who deserve it. Right, Robb?” His lip curled furiously, as did the men when he grasped his meaning. I couldn’t answer before they spoke.

“Why, you—” he broke off in mid-sentence, as though his rage couldn’t be contained.

The third, the one who had yet to say anything, sighed. “Enough, Hammon. Ye know how Lore is.” He nodded to my father, who was grudgingly still at what sounded like reasonable thought. “Here for that wagon, then, are you?”

“Aye,” Da said, with a terse nod. “And I’ll be gone soon as.”

“And what good does that do us??” another man snarled, nowhere near as mean as the first, but not understanding like the last neither. “The damn table’s broke, there’s at least a dragon’s worth in damages!”

“And what’s that got to do with me?” my father asked lowly, taking one firm step forwards. I couldn’t see his face, standing behind him as I was, but I could tell from the sound of his voice he was not amused. The man who had voiced his complaints fell silent at once, but the other piped up in his stead.

“Seeing as it’s _your_ lads who caused the ruckus!”

My father scoffed, and I could vividly imagine his eyes rolling with exaggerated impatience. “I’m not giving you a single fucking coin.”

One was swift to counter. “Then your lads can come and work off the debt.”

My father snorted dryly, arms folded over his chest. “Not fucking likely.”

The first man with the obnoxious attitude sneered in contempt at my father, but the third, the one who had coached reasoning and rational thought, spoke up once more. “Go get your wagon and leave. Best not to come back round these parts for a while,” the man added, and my father stared at the three for a long moment, before nodding once at them and turning to my brother and I brusquely.

“Wagon’s round back. Move it.” He didn’t bother to look over his shoulder as he marched ahead, the limp in his bad leg barely noticeable. I wondered how hard it was for him to hide it, to conceal his perceived weakness. Eddy and I sprinted after him, neither of us eager to spend an extra second with the men, both standing or otherwise.

“Will he be ok?” Eddard mouthed to me, and I shrugged off the question, unwilling to think about it for too long. I had no desire to envision a dead man. Loading and hitching a wagon, although terribly laborious work, was a welcomed respite to the swirling chaos of thoughts inside my head.

It wasn’t a very heavy wagon to be fair, and my father _did_ actually help out a great deal (I hadn’t really expected him not to). My brother and I worked in complete silence, as my father guided our horse to the reins of the cart. Between the three of us, we had it hitched and rearing to go in no time.

“Right, lads.” My father took the reins of our horse and led him by foot from vendor to vendor, instructing us of what to pick up, how much to grab, where to put it in the wagon. We were swift and we were serious, and there wasn’t actually much to take. Word must have travelled through the merchants about the brawl, for many gave my father a wider berth than usual. If it bothered him, I couldn’t tell.

By the time we were done, it was well into the afternoon, and the thought of getting onto the wagon and riding home was more and more appealing by the minute. Neither Edd nor myself dared complain, but we share glances frequently, and the depth of our misery grew by the second.

We were terrified. For my father had yet to speak about the matter where both of us were nearly maimed for eternity.

My family left the marketplace not too soon before supper was due to be on the table, and so there was no time for my poor, stupid brother to go find Bess. He opened his mouth for half a second to protest when my father told us to climb on the front seat with him, but one eyebrow raised from my father silenced him before he could start.

All the way home, there was no sound to be heard other than the fading rumble of the vendors in the background, and the clip-clop of the horse and wagon. Da was silent, and my brother and I were both too scared to even glance up at him. But even from the corner of my eye, I thought I glimpsed a trickle of blood in the corner of his lip, a reminder of the scrape he’d fought us out of. Guilt which I hadn’t known the likes of before now festered in my heart, swelling large and taking root. Given by the almost-mute sniffling sounds from my brother, his heart was as heavy as mine own.

Finally, as we reached the final leg of our journey, my father spoke.

“Tomorrow, the three of us will go out to the field beyond the crops, and I’ll show you how to defend yourselves proper.”

He didn’t say anything else, didn’t offer a reason or an explanation why. But he did, quite shockingly, sound calm and collected. Pensive, if anything. I was sure my brother and I would be in tremendous trouble; my mind couldn’t make sense of what was happening.

Hesitant but too curious for my own good, I spoke up at last. “T-thank you, father. But… But I thought you said before, fighting isn’t useful for farming land?”

It’s true, it was something he said to us regularly as children. But my father’s face didn’t change.

“Aye, it’s true. But you won’t be living alone, will you, lads? Buggering brigands and thieves and cravens… You’ll needs keep an eye out for them. Besides, if anything should happen to me, someone must protect the farm, and your lady mother.”

My lady mother. I always liked that he called her that for some reason, though she was not a lady or even a lady’s maid.

But I disliked the thought of my father not being around to protect her. To protect _us._ I frowned across my father’s lap at my brother, seated on his other side. We shared identical expressions of fear and unhappiness.

He sighed loudly, irritable for the first time since the incident.

“What is it, then? Spit it out.”

“You… You will be here to…to look after us for a long time, won’t you?” I hastened to correct myself. “To look after mother, I mean. You, um, you’re strong. And fierce. And hale.”

My father looked down his hooked nose at me—I was seated on his scarred side, the same scars I had grown up smiling at my whole life—and he didn’t speak for a moment, as though deciding how to answer my question. Lying, I knew well, did not come easily to my father. I hadn’t known him to lie to me for the entirety of my childhood, in fact.

“I hope to be around for a long time,” he assured us both, in a gruff but not unkind voice. Relief mingled with doubt in my heart; it wasn’t the sure answer I had hoped for, but it was better than nothing. And with my green naivety, it was easy to pretend the words were a promise to live forever.

“Go on, then.” My father nodded to the house, where my mother was standing in our front door, smiling at us in the setting sun. “Go wash up.”

My brother and I both dismounted with a quick, graceless scramble of limbs down the wagon sides, but before we went inside, I stopped and turned to my Da.

“I’m sorry, for before. For getting into trouble.”

I stared up at my Da, at the swelling bruise on his cheek and the tired lines in his face, and felt tears creep up against my will. But he only nodded, a terse gesture that was meant to dismiss the matter at once, I knew so.

If only my heart would let my guilt go so easily.

As Eddy and I rushed inside, our mother stepped out into the field, an apron around her round belly, wiping her hands clean on the cloth. Her hair was pulled back and her face flushed, but she looked happy to see us.

“Did you have a nice day with your father?” she asked pleasantly, and two of my sisters appeared in the doorway with matching braids and dresses of hardy cloth. They giggled at something I didn’t care to know, bouncing around on their tiptoes, waiting to ambush my father, I’m sure.

My brother and I shared looks of hesitancy and fear at her question. “Da was really good to us,” Eddy mumbled, and I nodded before grabbing his hand and tugging him inside. My mother’s face fell a bit at Eddy’s strange answer, and I watched from the safety of the house as she approached my father, who was unhitching Stranger from the wagon.

I heard a bit of their conversation from the house, and saw my mother press her hands to her chest in fear. At once, my father made reassuring gestures, pointing to the house—to _us,_ I realized with a start—and took her in his arms carefully.

As they embraced, I swore I saw my mother raise her palm tenderly to his cheek, to the spot my father had been hit, and caressed it gently. She said something, something I couldn’t make out, and my father held her tighter.

 

* * *

 

Dinner was a quiet affair, and my mother constantly asked my brother and I if we were hurt or injured or scared. Finally my father called her off, saying, “Little bird, they’re fine. Come sit and eat, and feed yourself and the babe.”

My mother did eat, and when we were done, she and my father retreated to their room on the second floor. Our house wasn’t so big, but it was large enough for us—my parents, my brother and I and our three (soon to be four) little sisters.

My brother and I were responsible for cleaning up, and when we were done, we played with our sisters in the sitting room for a bit. I even played a game of chanting and clapping with the girls once—just the once, of course. (I had to maintain my status as a man.)

My mother and father came down shortly after and carried the two youngest girls to bed, and my Da bid my brother and I good night.

“Get to bed,” he ordered, and allowed Aylee, our oldest sister, to cling to his free hand while he carried baby Serra in his other arm.

“Yes, Da,” my brother and I said.

I meant to go to bed straight afterwards, but I sat on the floor for some time after Eddy had left, complaining that I just wanted to sit alone for a bit.

“If you say so,” Eddy muttered doubtfully, but obeyed my wishes all the same.

A warm hand came to rest on my shoulder not long after the flames in the hearth had died down. I looked up into the soft eyes of my mother, a shade of blue strong enough to startle you.

“Your father told you to get to bed, young man.” But there wasn’t so much anger in her words, though the warning was plain. I blushed and nodded, but couldn’t bring myself to move. My mother sighed. “Come here, then,” she coaxed, and guided me to the chair large enough to seat my father—therefore, large enough to seat me and my mother.

I climbed on after her, mindful of her belly. “Is he kicking lots?” I asked curiously, and was happy to see her grin a bit.

“It could be a girl, you know.”

“No, mother!” I whined, and patted her belly carefully. “It’ll be a boy. It _has_ to be a boy. It just isn’t fair otherwise!”

She was laughing now. “Well, if you command it, Robb, then it must be so, I suppose.” And with a fond touch, she brushed some of my curls out of my eyes, looking down on me with such great love and compassion, it undid me in that very moment.

“Your father tells me you were very brave today,” she says quietly, and I looked down at the ground at once.

“I wanted to weep like a babe.”

“Crying has naught to do with bravery,” my mother said firmly. “You stood your ground, and didn’t leave your brother. You knew you had done no wrong, and you defended yourself. It was admirable, Robb.” She smiled a bit wryly then. “But perhaps next time, you might try running.”

“If you say so,” I agreed casually, and her chuckle rumbled against my chest once more.

“Are you still upset about it?” my mother asked carefully. I plucked at her sleeves, avoiding her eyes at all cost.

“No. Only… I still feel…badly about it.”

She sighed. “Children get into trouble all the time, much as I would like to order you to never do it again. It was an accident. And accidents do happen. Certainly you _should_ have stayed where your father said, but it isn’t as though you went looking for trouble. And you’ll know better for next time, won’t you?”

I nodded my head slowly, the pressure of tears building up by the second. My mother smiled, unaware of the sobs building in my chest.

“There, see? Your father knew that. Why do you think he wasn’t so angry with you two? He must have been so scared when he saw…” My mother held me tighter as she trailed off mid-sentence. “Well, that doesn’t matter now. You’re alright, as is your brother.”

I couldn’t believe my father was scared of anything, but the way he’d acted today did speak to something out of the ordinary. Mayhap he truly _was_ scared.

“Da hit the man a lot,” I said seriously. My mother frowned a bit.

“I’m sure that was upsetting to see. Your father was only protecting you and your brother though. You know that, right?”

I did. I _did_ know that. But now that I said it aloud, I realized how much the whole thing had bothered me. Watching him face off four men, wondering if he would be ok, praying that we could get up and leave the mess behind… I felt my chest constrict in fear at the memory of it.

“He’ll be ok, right?” I asked, glancing meekly up at my mother, whose brow furrowed now in confusion. “The man…he _hit_ Da…”

“Oh. Oh! Yes. _Heavens_ yes. Your father is fine. Not to worry, I cleaned him right up,” she winked at me, meaning to create a sense of relief and ease in my heart, but I only knew unhappiness.

I sniffled now, and could no longer hold back my crying. “B-but it’s m-m-my fault! It’s my f-fault he was hurt!” I wept, fat tears rolling down my cheeks and dripping to the floor. “If w-we’d just s-s-stayed put…”

“Shh,” my mother smoothed a hand tenderly across my forehead, rubbing my cheek with her thumb lovingly. She pressed me close to her, as close as the massive roundness of her belly would let me be. With a grudging acceptance, I allowed her to cradle my head and run her fingers through the hair at the nape of my neck. “Oh, my poor boy… I know of the guilt you feel.” She let me pull away, just enough to look up at her sad eyes. Mother swept her thumbs over my tear-stained cheeks, rubbing the dampness away with gentle touches.

“But your father did his duty to protect you. A parent will go to any lengths to protect their child,” she added almost to herself, something far off and terribly sad in the back of her thoughts. I barely breathed, I was so uncertain of what to say in reply. I had no idea what she was referring to, no idea how to comfort her.

After a moment, she looked at me with some firmness to her features, and a pinched quality to her brow. “You _shouldn’t_ have wandered off like that, this is true. But the fight between your father and this other man—it was _not_ your fault. It may feel that way for some time, but you’ll realize the truth of it. When you have a babe of your own, when you understand that need to cherish and protect…” She trailed off for a moment, a soft smile returning to her face. “You will see.”

And she washed my face with cold water, kissed my forehead and tucked me in—something she had not done in a long time. “Sleep well, dear Robb,” she whispered, and told me she loved me before leaving the room and closing the door behind her.

My mother told me I would understand one day what it means to willingly go to any lengths to protect a child, when I had a babe of my own. She said I would see in time.

And as my wife places our firstborn in my arms, a son I will name Sandor, I find that yes, once again…

 

…my mother is right.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This work is inspired very loosely off of a scene from Christopher Moore's "The Lamb" which, if you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend. (As long as you've got a sense of humour when it comes to mocking religion...) There's some really heart-warming scenes between father and son in the start of the book and it made me think of this, for whatever reason. 
> 
> (I basically insert Sandor and Sansa into everything I read or see, ever. My life is officially no longer my own anymore).
> 
> And I know it's tooth rot, but really, I just love fluff. I don't think there's any harm in that.
> 
> Thanks for reading. As usual, I own nothing.


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